PAX Centurion - January / February 2014

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • January/February 2014 • Page 31 What it means to be ‘essential’ Boston EMS Corner: Ed McCarthy Please help the homeless By Ed McCarthy, EMS Editor D uring the last snowstorm, I was going through some day-old emails between calls. I saw several sent out from the Public Health Commission that cautioned “non-essential personnel” to stay home, and if uncertain, check with their supervisor to see if they were “es- sential” or not. I came away from those messages thinking how glad I was to be ‘essential personnel’. Boston EMS EMTs and Para- medics are ‘essential personnel’. It takes a special kind of person to be one of them. EMS work is difficult on a good day. Add in bad weather, and it becomes especially trying. Crews trudge through waist-deep snow, clamber over debris-filled snow banks, and fight their way up slippery walks and streets to reach patients who call for help, all the while carrying better than fifty pounds of equipment on their backs. Despite bad conditions, somebody has to help people who call 911 for emergency medical care in this city, and the men and women of Boston EMS rise to the occasion four hundred times a day, despite bliz- zards like the ones that have visited Boston over the past few years. This dedication is not only demonstrated during bad weather, however. Working for Boston EMS means an EMT will miss out on many special occasions and holiday celebrations with their families, as a result of their dedication to duty. Being ‘essential personnel’ means that the ambulances have to be staffed and running at full com- pliment in order to answer that call for help, no matter what day it is. The Operations Center, likewise has to be fully staffed so that calls for help get processed and dispatched appropriately. Everyone at EMS knows that when former Mayor Menino pinned that badge on their shirts that they were taking on a great responsibility that came with the job, and everyone takes that responsibility seriously. The dedicated EMTs and Paramed- ics of Boston EMS show up for work on holidays, and the dates of special family events when scheduled, and do it with pride. I have always been proud to be counted amongst such a group that would never shirk their duty onto someone else. No one at EMS would be so SELFISH as to call out on a holiday shift that another EMT would have to cover. To do so is simply....’snake-like’. The very idea is abhorrent to personnel at EMS. Calling in sick for a football game? No one worth his salt would do such a thing at Boston EMS. So when another snowstorm is on its way, or there’s a big holiday coming up, the citizens of Boston can rest assured that the ambulanc- es of Boston EMS are staffed with the most dedicated, and respon- sible people in the business, all of them ‘essential personnel’. I t’s that time of year once again, everyone. The weather is cold, and the nights are long, and dark. We all need to set aside extra blankets, jackets, and other cold weather items for those less fortunate than most of the rest of us. No, I’m not talking about the homeless on the street, or any other needy group such as that. I’m talking about Boston EMS crews with no stations. In a situation that would never be tolerated in our sister public safety services, several Boston EMS units have no stations to go back to between calls. These crews shift-change at EMS garages where ambulances can park in a bay, but are not allowed to stay there. They are told to go, and sit at designated street corners for their entire shift, and are warned not to “be caught hanging around” the station. There they are assigned to sit. On the side of the road. All day. Boston EMS is trying to grow to meet demand. The call volume increases year by year, topping out in 2013 at over 110,000 calls. In an attempt to reduce response times, more units were put into service, particularly in outer lying areas of the city, but there were no sta- tions to house them. With no solution, the crews were assigned street corners. One glimmer of hope was dashed by our own administra- tors. A small station was acquired by EMS for Ambulance 17 in Roslindale Square. The build- ing was refurbished for the use of the EMS crews, and even had the de- partments’ communications system and intranet installed. The phone number was 3-1017 in the EMS Department directory. All ready to go. Unfor- tunately, some folks from the Public Heath Commission took a liking to the building. Shortly thereafter, they informed EMS that it could no longer use the it, as the PHC was going to use the building to store See Homeless on page 32